


if you wanna start a fight (better throw the first punch and make it a good one)

by cloudcompany



Category: CrankGameplays - Fandom, Unus Annus - Fandom, Video Blogging RPF, jacksepticeye, markiplier - Fandom
Genre: Boxing & Fisticuffs, Bruises, Everyone is Badass, Fight Club AU, Non-Graphic Violence, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:08:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24533578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudcompany/pseuds/cloudcompany
Summary: Mark does not have anger issues and he's not a violent person. Really, he isn't.He still really enjoys the fight club his smarmy coworker Dave sends him to.or, how to make friends with someone after you've punched each other in the face repeatedly.
Relationships: Mark Fischbach & Ethan Nestor, Mark Fischbach & Sean McLoughlin
Comments: 4
Kudos: 28





	if you wanna start a fight (better throw the first punch and make it a good one)

**Author's Note:**

> a fight club au that was inspired by mark and ethan's fight choreography ( as seen in 'mark and ethan get into a fight'). i was only planning for a fun story about a bunch of friends beating the ever-living shit out of each other for fun, but it grew into a fun story about a bunch of friends beating the ever-living shit out of each other for fun while talking about their feelings instead.  
> so have fun with that!

if you wanna start a fight (better throw the first punch and make it a good one)

* * *

Mark’s not a particularly violent guy. Not really.

It’s just, coupled with his natural ability to be hard on himself concerning every little detail and the general frustration brought on by his job, sometimes he gets a little…anxious. Testy. Irritable.

Not violent, not necessarily. Just antsy.

(antsy enough to put a hole through the wall of his home gym, but that’s beside the point)

The point is, Mark isn’t the violent type. He never has been. Sure, he’s had moments where shit hit the fan pretty hard in life and he subsequently flipped out, but it’s always been more on the ‘quietly seething with rage combined with the darkest of dark looks’ end of the spectrum. There was that one rare moment where he threw a chair once. Broke the legs off the damn thing in the process.

(and he also has a hole in the wall now too)

He’s never actively hit anyone though.

(okay, so he broke a guy’s rib once, but that was in self-defense; _it doesn’t count_ )

He does _not_ have anger issues. Not a one.

So it’s kind of insulting when Dave from quality assurance hands him a slip of paper one afternoon as Mark is returning from lunch and says in a hushed whisper, “for your anger issues,” clapping him on the shoulder with a sympathetic smile before turning away.

Mark blinks at his back as Dave disappears down the hallway, only just now processing what’s been said to him and opens his mouth to call out to Dave that he, in fact, does not have anger issues, but Dave is gone, leaving Mark standing there alone with a folded up piece of notebook paper in his hand. He wants to throw it away the minute he gets back to his desk. He wants to know how Dave knows that he’s anxious and frustrated often. He does not have anger issues, but he didn’t think he was projecting his anxiety to the point where his coworkers took notice. Maybe it was just a joke. Or maybe it was just something that happened to every employee here; civic engineering could be stressful after all. Maybe Dave just did this for everyone here because everyone here was stressed, and now it was Mark’s turn to receive the cryptic message from him. Still, Mark scowls at the paper and inwardly curses Dave for making assumptions. Honestly, how rude.

Mark unfolds the paper, half expecting to find a phone number attached to some adult service, because Dave seemed like the kind of guy who was smarmy enough to recommend a skanky hookup in order to relieve stress. Instead, he finds an address and a specific date and time scrawled in the typical messy engineer handwriting. He doesn’t recognize the place, which is to be expected – Los Angeles is a big city, and Mark can’t be expected to know every last building – and a date set for Friday, two days from now, at 9 p.m. sharp.

There are other things Mark could be doing on a Friday night than visiting some sketchy building at 9 in the evening, which is suspiciously late. His curiosity eats at him though. It would help if Dave told him what to expect, even gave him a hint. But every time Mark tries to catch him to make him explain, he’s in the middle of something or just outright disappears like he's hiding from him. He starts to wonder if Dave is trying to induct him into a cult. He seemed like the kind of person who would do something like that.

Mark puts off going to the address. He doesn’t actively make plans to go on Friday. He goes about the rest of the week telling himself that he’s not going to go, then entertaining the thought of maybe checking it out just to see, just because he’s admittedly, traitorously curious. By the time he gets off work Friday evening, he’s got four hours to wait until the mystery event kicks off, his stomach is full of butterflies and his veins are filled with buzzing static. He sits on the couch. Then he gets up, walks into the kitchen. Open the refrigerator. Closes the refrigerator. Goes back to the couch. He checks his phone. Goes upstairs, changes his work shirt and pants for jeans and a t-shirt. Goes back downstairs. Paces the living room. It’s agony waiting for 9 o’clock. He’s probably checked his phone two hundred times. When 9 finally does roll around at the speed of molasses, Mark almost gives up entirely. He almost decides to order food, strip down out of his clothes and play video games for the rest of the night.

Fuck Dave. Fuck this mystery bullshit.

But the curiosity, traitorous and loud in his head, eats away at him. He looks at his phone one more time.

When it’s fifteen minutes to 9:30, Mark drops into his car and guns it down the street before he can talk himself out of it, Google Maps guiding him to his destination.

By the time Mark arrives, he’s already sensing that this was a bad idea. The Map’s AI had guided him into a sketchy part of town, secluded and seemingly darker here than it was in the part of the city Mark was from. But that’s not the worst of it.

Mark is…confused.

The address he’d put into Google Maps on his phone had said that it belonged to a storage warehouse. That was equally weird; why would Dave send him to a _storage warehouse_ to blow off steam? But when he gets there, parking his Tesla in the mostly empty parking lot, it becomes really obvious that the storage business has been closed for a long time. The warehouse is old and faded and the area that it’s located in is seedy as hell. There’s not even any street lights to light the lot. Mark almost turns the car around and leaves. He cuts the ignition and sits there in the dark for a few minutes. He puts the key back in the ignition, but doesn’t turn it. He watches the warehouse for signs of life. There aren’t any really, save for the obviously not abandoned cars in the lot, and there’s only four or five of them spread out across the entire tarmac, so there are definitely people inside. Mark huffs out an annoyed breath. He leans his head back against the headrest and stares at the ceiling. It’s already a little past 9:30. If he’s going to do something, now is the time to do it. He looks at the warehouse looming ahead of him. The warehouse looks back with its aura of mystery. Mark scrubs a hand through his hair.

“Fuck it.”

* * *

There are way more than four or five car’s worth of people in here. When Mark gets into the warehouse, he’s greeted with at least fifty people in a crowd, huddled tight around something in the middle of the room. The storage warehouse isn’t that huge, but there’s more than enough space for fifty people to spread out. Obviously, they’re watching something, and Mark has a sinking feeling that he knows what it is based on the sketch-factor alone. As he gets closer to the crowd, he hears the grunts and groans of people getting physical, and he’s not so far removed from his days as a high school wrestler that he doesn’t recognize the sounds of two guys beating the shit out of each other.

There’s a gap in the center of the crowd, a large circle that’s mostly empty save for the two shirtless dudes that are currently roughing each other up. The one on the left looks like he just escaped prison, tatted up and bulky, while the one on the right looks like somebody’s eccentric uncle who has way too much time on his hands. They’ve paused in the actual scrap when Mark gets close enough to see the entire ring, watching each other like hawks. He settles in next to some guy in a hoodie who’s shouting at the top of his lungs and takes in the scene around him.

Mark watches the two fighters circle each other, then the tension between them snaps like a taut string and they lunge at the same time, meeting up in a sloppy lock-up that makes the ex-wrestler in him cringe. The guy on the left gets in a nasty looking punch to the one on the right’s gut, going in once, twice, three times before his opponent stumbles away to re-orient himself. He gives him no time, kicking him square in the chest with a huge boot. The sound of the bottom of his boot meeting the guy’s sternum is audible and the guy goes flying back, falling before the feet of the crowd, who hoist him back up and shove him right back into the fight.

They go at it for a while longer, Mark watching the whole spectacle with a slight grimace. There’s blood flying eventually, and its mostly one sided now that the tattooed guy on the left has the upper hand. Eventually, he just flat out knocks his opponent out with a mean suckerpunch and the crowd cheers as if they’re just watching a football game and not two grown adult men beat the hell out of each other. A bit of money exchanges hands, but a lot of them are preoccupied with searching for the next fight to satisfy their bloodlust.

_This_ is what Dave invited him to: what looks to be an illegal fight club in downtown Los Angeles? What the fuck? What kind of person did he think Mark was?

But there’s something there, deep inside Mark’s brain that is kind of a little bit intrigued. He’s not violent, but he _had_ been a wrestler once. The thought of getting physical again, feeling the rush of adrenaline and sweat and blood rushing through his veins, muscles hot and aching…it kind of excites him. It’s a competitive sort of high, he thinks, and he’s always been a competitive guy. He likes to prove to himself that he can go beyond his limits, that he can be better and better. He doesn’t necessarily want to beat anyone until they’re spitting blood, but maybe, just maybe, he wants to get the feel of someone’s muscles straining under him as he locks up with them again. His fists are closing and opening without him realizing it, heartbeat steadily picking up. This is dangerous, he knows, but he’s always said that life was too short to be worrying about every little thing. And anyways, he liked a little danger, absolutely relished change.

“New fighter?”

Mark starts, whipping around to follow the voice he somehow heard over the roar of the crowd. There’s a guy standing next to him suddenly, and not the one he’d ended up next to when he’d first arrived. He’s about Mark’s height, light haired, blue-eyed. He’s looking at Mark with an amicable grin.

“Me?” says Mark.

“Yeah, you. You a new fighter?” says the guy. He’s got an accent, probably Irish if Mark had to guess. He’s not sure, he’s not that great with accents.

“Uh…I don’t know.”

The guy looks him over. “You’d make a good one, probably. I just thought, you know, since you’ve got all that muscle. Not a lot of spectators around here are built like they could bench press a gorilla,” says the guy, which, that’s weird coming from him, because he’s not exactly muscled either, at least from what Mark can tell.

“I just got here. I don’t know what to think right now,” says Mark, rubbing the back of his neck. “Are you a fighter too?”

“Sometimes,” says the guy. He offers Mark a hand. “Name’s Seán. Most folks call me Jack.”

“Mark,” he says, shaking Jack’s hand.

“You thinking about mixing it up a little?” says Jack conversationally.

Mark hums. “Maybe. I got invited because someone thought I had anger issues, but I’m not really that kind of guy.”

“Well, try it once and see if you like it. I mean, it’s not for everybody, but I saw that look on your face. I know when someone knows their way around a ring and when they’re just faking it.”

Mark hums again, thoughtful, hesitant. Another unsure ‘ _I don’t know’_ hangs unspoken in the air between them. Was this really something he wanted to get mixed up in? After all, this was illegal, _very_ illegal. He could lose his job if he got caught, and then what?

Jack nudges his arm with his elbow as if he can hear his thoughts. “Come on. Mix it up with me. You don’t have to if you really don’t want to, but I think deep down you really want to give it a try. Could be fun.”

Mark knows it’s probably a bad idea. Aside from the possibility of getting caught, he hasn’t squared up with someone in years. Sure, he keeps fit and active these days, but as far as reading someone’s movements and reacting on time to them, he’s a little rusty. But there’s that thrill in his veins that’s been singing to him since he got here. He kind of wants to indulge it. _Really_ wants to indulge it. And besides, like Jack said, it could just be a one and done if he didn’t feel up to it anymore.

He looks back at Jack. “Alright.”

Jack grins. “Sick. Let’s do this.”

Mark’s eyebrows raise. “Now?”

He thought there’d be a system to this, like they would have to wait their turn to go at each other, hoping the club had some semblance of order. But nope, Jack is striding forward, pulling his shirt over his head and tossing another bright grin over his shoulder at Mark.

“Yeah, before you lose the nerve,” he says, then he’s pushing forward out from the crowd and into the empty circle. Mark follows, tentatively slipping his own shirt over his head. Jack has discarded his at the edge of the makeshift ring, so Mark drops his next to it. The crowd starts to shout again at the promise of another fight, already shuffling excitedly as Jack goes through a couple of preliminary stretches with his arms and shoulders. There’s still spatters of blood on the floor from the previous contenders. Mark glances at it out of the corner of his eye as he stretches out his limbs too. Then Jack settles into a stance, fists raised, feet apart. That throws Mark for a loop; he’s not claiming to be some master fighter, but he knows a practiced fighting stance when he sees one. He’d kind of expected Jack to be one of those brawler types, the kind who just swings randomly and hopes they land the shot. Who knows, he probably still could be, and the stance was only a well-trained psyche-out. Mark really doubts that, but still.

Even though it’s been a while, his body still remembers the square ups from his high school days. He slides into his own fighting stance, crouched, hands spread. Jack’s expression flickers, first a hint of confusion, followed by a dash of intrigue, and then he’s coming at Mark without any warning. He starts with a one-two punch, the first one a feint, the second one meant to hit home, and Mark only manages to dodge because he ducks low and grabs Jack around his middle like he would in a wrestling match, which he knows is a mistake the moment he executes it.

Jack brings his elbow down directly on Mark’s spine, then brings his knee up into his chest and catches Mark with a right hook when he stumbles back and away. Mark’s head spins, but he recovers well enough that he can duck and spear Jack around the waist again when he goes in with his left hook. He just manages to hook Jack’s ankle with his foot and send them both to the floor, and then he punches him square in the jaw. He’s holding back, he knows. He isn’t quite sure how far he can go, doesn’t know how far he _wants_ to go. He might have just tackled a man to the floor and socked him in the face, but he’s not trying to do any real and lasting damage, right?

Jack doesn’t give him the chance to question himself; when Mark goes in to clock him again, he jerks his head to the side and twists his hips under Mark with the momentum and rolls him off. Mark skitters away as Jack gets to his feet and immediately goes on the offensive again.

So Jack is good. Really good. Mark has a bit of an advantage, obviously, because he doesn’t seem too familiar with Mark’s fighting style (if you could call it that at the moment), but it won’t last forever. He’s only gotten one swing on Jack, while the latter has been bopping him up and down the ring since they started. It’s probably time to switch tactics, which could seriously backfire if Mark’s not careful. But if he’s going to win this, then it’s worth the shot. He’s learned how to defend himself from a handful of self-defense classes he took a few years ago, so he knows how to throw a punch and block. That will have to do for now.

Jack swings right – Mark bobs to the left – and then swings left – Mark ducks low, making a U shape, and then jabs as hard as he can straight up into Jack’s ribs. He follows that with a right hook of his own, catching him in the jaw. Jack stumbles back, leaving himself open just long enough for Mark to plant his foot right between his sternum and knock him to the floor. Jack rolls once he hits the ground and comes up in a low crouch, wincing a little as he swipes the back of his wrist across his mouth. He’s grinning as he straightens up, eyes glinting with _something_. Part of Mark is ecstatic; he’s getting into the swing of things again and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t starting to enjoy himself a little. The other part is more than a little worried, because now, Jack is laughing as he brings his fists up. He’s very clearly enjoying himself too, but that’s probably not a good thing. He’s still got way more experience than Mark and now he’s probably ‘in the zone’ or whatever having realized that Mark isn’t going to just give him an easy victory.

They circle each other, getting their second winds while keeping an eye on the other, and Mark decides to strike first. Right fist, left fist, followed by an uppercut, which Jack narrowly avoids and comes up swinging in retaliation. Something amazing happens then: Mark blocks.

Not only does he block, but he actually catches Jack’s fist – later he himself would tally that up as luck being on his side – and then lets instinct take over. He twists Jack’s arm behind him and would have kicked him in the back of the knees to send him down and finished the fight with and elbow directly into the juncture between his neck and shoulder. Jack is faster though, already moving by the time Mark gets behind him. He jerks his head back right into Mark’s nose, which startles him and loosens his hold on Jack’s wrist.

Whirling around, Jack jabs Mark square in the dip between his throat and collarbone – _that_ hurts like hell – disorienting Mark, then jabs him in the jaw with his left hand, grabs him the back of his neck with both hands and drives his knee hard into his sternum and kicks his leg out from underneath him, driving him straight into the floor.

Then Mark’s on his back, staring up at the ceiling, and it takes him a moment to realize that he’s down for the count. He’d probably blacked out too once he’d hit the ground, considering he didn’t quite remember how he’d gotten there on the floor, but he’s sure that the ache in the back of his head has something to do with that. Then Jack’s face comes into view above him. He’s panting and breathless, brushing his hair out of his eyes with one hand and reaching down to offer Mark his other one. He’s got a smile on his face, no more worse for wear than it had been when they’d first started, only this one is much lighter and friendly, where it had been sharp and wild during the duration of the fight. Mark reaches up and takes his hand, lets him help haul him to his feet and then Jack holds his fist out in an obvious gesture for a fist bump.

_No hard feelings._

Mark bumps his knuckles against Jack’s and then they break through the crowd back towards a more secluded part of the warehouse. Mark prods at his nose, hoping that it isn’t broken – Jack has a really hard head – and is relieved to find that it just stings, a dull throb pounding in time with his heartbeat. It’s not even bleeding.

“That was fun!” says Jack. His pupils are blown wide and his smile is bright and breathless. “Not a lot of people can keep up with me for as long as you did. We get a lot of street fighter types here, you know, guys who just swing with no thought behind it and hope to god they don’t get their teeth knocked out. But that was the most fun I’ve had in a while!”

Mark straightens up from where he was doubled over with his hands braced on his thighs. “Yeah,” he pants. “It’s been a while.”

Jack claps him on the shoulder. “You’re good. You said you hadn’t done this in a while? I can’t wait to see you once you get back in the swing of things.” He leans back against the wall and folds his arms over his chest. “Hey. You should come back next week. There’s a guy here, I’d kill to see you two duke it out.”

“Yeah,” says Mark again. He looks at the crowd, at the ring he can see through the writhing mass of people. A spark of excitement ignites in his chest at the sight of it. He can’t say he’s not at least a little intrigued by the guy Jack wants him to meet; if he was anything like the Irish fighter, he wouldn’t exactly be opposed to it. “Yeah. Sounds fun.”

* * *

Mark is sore for the rest of the weekend.

It’s different from the dull, pleasant ache that comes from a full workout, because now he’s got bruises along his jaw and spine and torso, as well as an awful headache to boot. This pain is harder, sharper, like his body is loudly reminding him ‘ _hey, idiot, don’t do that again!’_

He’s shocked to find that he doesn’t regret his bruises at all.

The purplish welts on his jaw have started to fade by the time he gets back to work on Monday – not completely gone, because his coworkers still ask him about them even though they don’t quite sting in pain anymore – and he only winces a little when one of his friendlier officemates clap him on his tender shoulder in greeting. Big improvement from when he was actively unable to lie down on his back on Saturday because of the pain.

Dave catches him at his desk thirty minutes before lunch. Mark wonders where he’s been the entire time. Had he really been actively hiding from Mark since the moment he gave him the tip about the fight club?

“Oh, hey,” says Dave. He doesn’t sound suspicious or anything, secretive like two secret society members interacting in public. “Have a good weekend? Oh man, your jaw- that looks like it hurts. You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Weekend was pretty good. Had an interesting time on the other side of town. How did you find that place anyway?” says Mark. He’s not sure how much he’s allowed to say out in the open like this.

Dave’s face lights up like he’d been waiting to discuss the fight club with Mark since he’d arrived. “Oh, you ended up going? Cool. My cousin found it a while ago. I went to hang out a couple of times, but you look like you got up close and personal. Hope it helped.”

“Uh, yeah,” says Mark. “But not because I was angry or anything. I don’t have anger issues. It’s a good way to…” Mark trails off and Dave’s eyebrows raise, the smarmy git. “Stay fit,” finishes Mark.

Dave nods, clearly doesn’t believe him. “Okay,” he says. “Well, glad I could help.”

Mark sincerely hopes Dave doesn’t rat him out, because he’d hate for this thing to get messy before he even got a chance to really experience it. He’s not saying that the club is his new favorite thing in the world; it’s just something that’s caught his attention a little. He’d had fun, and it had been a while since he’d had fun like that. He wants to explore it; after all, he’d always been told that life was too short not to do what you wanted to do.

For the rest of the week, Mark throws himself into work – engineering work, of course – and spends a few extra hours in the gym after. He doesn’t talk to Dave again, not wanting to get overly familiar just in case he couldn’t trust him not to give him away, and really, he just doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he got Mark into this strange new hobby? Pastime? Whatever.

Occasionally, his thoughts drift back towards the club and Jack and the mystery person he wants him to meet. He thinks a lot about Jack’s fighting style: it reminds him of boxing the way his repertoire focused mostly on quick strikes and a bit of grappling – though not as much as Mark was accustomed to - and Mark has even noticed that Jack had adhered to the traditional rules of the sport in the heat of their match, like not striking him when he was down. He’s probably had formal training somewhere. Makes him curious about his background. Was he a professional fighter at some point?

He wonders what the mystery guy is like, if he’s any different from Jack. Must be if Jack wants to see him and Mark go at it. For the first time in a long time, Mark is excited about something other than work. It had been a long time since he’d been excited about work even; not that he didn’t like his job, it was just, after six years of relatively the same thing, his wide-eyed excitement for civil engineering had waned. That and he was older now, more mature. He’d mellowed out some since he’d starting working, realized some things, toned down expectations in some areas, raised them in others. This – the fight club – was refreshing. It was dangerous and exciting and would definitely not last long into the future if the police caught wind of it. He might as well enjoy it while it lasted.

* * *

When Mark heads back to the warehouse that Friday, he’s a little more careful about where he parks his car. If the cops happen to show up, he doesn’t want his car – the only Tesla in the lot – to be a dead giveaway as to who he might be, so he parks a block away and walks to the warehouse instead. This way he’s much less noticeable and gets a moment to stretch his legs before he needs to get moving more precisely and vigorously.

Almost as soon as he gets inside, Jack notices him from where he’d been waiting by the edge of the crowd and waves him over.

“Hey, you made it!” he says, a big grin on his face. “Come here, I want to introduce you to someone.”

They skirt around the crowd, avoiding the fight going on beyond them, and Jack guides him into one of the corners of the warehouse. There’s a guy there in the process of stretching his legs, though he pauses when Jack calls his name and looks up as they approach. Mark blinks; the guy looks like a teenager, barely old enough to _drive_ , let alone be here at an illegal fight club. The bright grin he gives them as they approach does absolutely nothing to make him seem older either; if anything, it makes him look even younger.

“Mark, this is Ethan,” says Jack jerking his thumb at the guy. “Ethan, this is Mark. He’s the one I was telling you about.”

“Good things, I hope,” says Mark, voice listing aimlessly through the air as he’s more preoccupied with staring at this kid – Ethan, as he’s just been introduced.

“Yeah, totally,” says Ethan, and Mark resists the urge to gawk because even his _voice_ sounds like it belongs to a kid. “You kept up with Jack, that’s pretty impressive. There’s too many guys around here who don’t even know how to throw a proper punch, so it’s cool that you’ve got some actual skill.”

“Thanks,” Mark mutters, still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that Ethan, who looks so soft around the edges and innocent, is apparently supposed to be on par with Jack in terms of fighting. Ethan smiles again and brushes his dark hair out his eyes in a movement that shouldn’t be as endearing as it is.

“Oh!” he says. “I forgot.” He reaches up, offering a hand to Mark to shake. Mark can just make out the outlines of healing and healed scrapes and bruises on his knuckles and feels the callouses on the pads of his fingers and palm when he takes his hand.

“To make it official,” says Ethan helpfully. “Are you fighting tonight?”

“Yeah, I guess,” says Mark at the same time Jack says, “You guys should fight.”

Ethan nods. “Yeah, sure! I mean, if you’re okay with it, Mark.”

Mark knows better than to underestimate someone, but… _Ethan_. Ethan, who actually stumbles when he gets to his feet, who is looking at him so earnestly, like someone’s overenthusiastic puppy. Ethan wants to fight him. But does he really want to fight Ethan?

“Sure,” he hears himself say instead, “why wouldn’t I be okay with it?”

Ethan nods, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Awesome. Let me finish warming up and we’ll go after this fight. That okay?”

Mark nods and Ethan goes back to stretching. Not that Mark’s watching, but Ethan’s really graceful. While he’s stretching, his movements are much more fluid and purposeful than when Mark had seen him trying to get to his feet earlier and managed to trip. It’s like watching water flow, calm and purposeful.

Then Ethan opens his mouth and starts talking again – he’s telling Jack about how he happened to drop a piece of kitchen equipment on his foot earlier in the week and got a really awful-looking bruise later - and just like with his feet earlier, he stumbles spectacularly over the word ‘skillet’. Poor kid tries for almost a full two minutes to first: think of the right word to use, and then: pronounce it correctly. This had to be a joke, right? Something to psyche his opponents out before a fight, make them think he was super unassuming and bumbling? 

“Okay!” chirps Ethan once he’s finished stretching. “You ready for this?”

“Sure,” says Mark, who tries not to sigh. Ethan, who he’s only known for fifteen minutes tops, is already giving him a headache. Ethan wiggles out of his shirt, getting caught up in the fabric in the process like a dork, before Jack reaches out and pulls it the rest of the way off for him.

“Thanks,” Ethan giggles, “I almost died.”

Jack rolls his eyes, but unlike Mark, he laughs. “God, you’re such a loser.”

Ethan disappears into the crowd with Mark following close behind, slipping out of his shirt too as he wades through the bodies. When Ethan emerges first, the crowd makes a strange noise, half jeering, half cheering. Apparently Ethan garners mixed-reception from the audience; Mark isn’t too sure how he feels about that. When Mark emerges, however, the crowd ‘ _oohs_ ’, kind of like the way kids do on the playground when one of their classmates gets in trouble for throwing rocks at another student. That could mean one of two things: Mark is either going to lay waste to this poor twelve-year-old, or he’s in for the ass-whooping of a lifetime. He’s willing to bet it’s the former, simply because half the crowd is vocally adamant that they don’t like Ethan.

That thought is reaffirmed greatly when someone in the back of the crowd bellows, “ _Kill that twink!_ ”

He sees Ethan theatrically blow a kiss in the direction of the voice and then settle into a combative stance that Mark recognizes as the one Jack was using last week. Maybe they’ve trained together? But where Jack had a little muscle on him and a mean right hook, Ethan is built like a gymnast: a lean little thing who would have probably been better off running circles around his attackers rather than fighting them hand-to-hand. He’s still got that smile on his face too, but its slight and quiet, a far cry from the huge beaming ones Mark had already grown accustomed to. His eyes are sharper too, expression friendly, but also distinctly _unfriendly_ at the same time. It’s kind of like a mask, Mark thinks, with something else hiding underneath. Mark doesn’t quite like that. He’ll have to keep on his guard. He shakes out his hands and draws them into fists level with his chest and shoulders, forgoing the traditional grappling stance he’d used last week. During his free time after work, when he wasn’t working out with his trainer, he practiced fighting a little more. His new style was more akin to boxing, with a few little extra moves thrown in for good measure to keep his opponents on their toes. He wasn’t saying that he was going to completely level the competition, but he was getting better at combat that was better suited to the type of fighters that seemed common here and wasn’t Greco-Roman in design at least.

Mark’s not actually expecting Ethan to make the first move, but Ethan lunges at him with his right fist and nearly catches Mark across the jaw, would’ve laid him out if Mark hadn’t moved at the last second. Mark was expecting him to be fast – he’s small and lithe enough, of course he’s going to be quick, and Mark’s willing to bet he’s even faster than he is – and takes the opportunity of Ethan’s close proximity to strike with a left hook.

Which Ethan catches.

Mark’s fist goes scrapping across the outer side of Ethan’s forearm raised to block, and then Ethan gets a good hard dig into him, right in the gut with his right fist. He jerks his knee up and into Mark’s still smarting torso and then yanks him forward, presumably for another knee, but Mark rolls free and away from him.

Ethan’s grinning as he raises his fists again. The next few minutes are a dance; both of them are skittering in and out of each other’s reach, just barely touching, and someone in the crowd shouts, “Just hit him already!”

Mark has no idea if that’s directed at him or at Ethan, but they’re right, whoever they are: the fight will never end if they keep up this song and dance. So Mark makes the first move. He takes a page out of Jack’s book and moves in with a feint, both of which Ethan dodges, then goes in for an uppercut to the ribs. Mark still isn’t quite sure what happens next, but he knows its like nothing he’s seen in real life before.

Ethan grabs his arm as it comes swinging at him, twists it painfully, and through some crazy display of acrobatics, makes a move like a cartwheel and scissors his legs around Mark’s neck, dropping him to the floor. The next thing Mark knows his arm is caught in an armbar, his back arching off the floor as pain settles in. It takes him a moment to realize what’s happened, and a second longer to snap back into action.

He’s stronger than Ethan – he knows this for a fact – and is able to bend his arm towards him, despite Ethan’s best efforts. Kid’s got a grip if nothing else, but Mark reaches up and gets his hands together, trapping Ethan’s in the crook of his elbow. It’s a grappling move he hasn’t had to use in a while, but his body remembers the movements regardless; with his right hand, he grabs hold of Ethan’s trapped wrist and pulls it forward, yanking it out and over his arm, freeing himself. Arm free, he rolls onto his side and grabs Ethan’s leg, fully intending to turn it into a leg lock, but Ethan wiggles out of his grasp, rolling backwards and landing with catlike grace on his feet. Mark snarls. He gets now why Jack wanted the two of them to fight; Ethan’s got a counter for every move Mark makes. He also gets why half the crowd doesn’t seem to like Ethan. He’s not a drag-out, bare-knuckle fighter. He’s not here to give the audience a show, with blood and teeth flying everywhere and broken bones aplenty; he’s here to win.

So now Mark has to be careful, because any limb offered up to Ethan can be used against him. He’ll let Ethan make the first move this time. He’s not scared, but with a fighter like him, it’s probably best to watch what he’s doing and find a way to stop it. Mark realizes too late that it’s not actually a very good idea at all.

Ethan comes swinging at him and for the most part, Mark’s ready. He catches it, twists and flips Ethan over his shoulder to the floor and rolls with him, locking his legs over Ethan’s torso and catching the arm in an armbar of his own. He’d tried this move once in high school; it was super illegal during sanctioned matches, but at practice it was just good, clean fun. Right now, it’s not quite as clean, but it’ll do the job.

It’s not the same armbar technique that Ethan had caught Mark in earlier, harder to get out of with Mark’s leg pinning his head down against the floor. Hard, but not impossible because Ethan is a wiggly bastard, and worms his way out from under Mark’s leg. Mark has no choice but to let him go and scramble back to his feet or risk being vulnerable and open on the ground. He gets back to his feet first and levels a punch just as Ethan is rising to meet him.

Ethan catches his arm, and spins, back to back with Mark, elbows Mark in the back just above the base of his spine, reaches up and wraps his arm around the front of his neck and flips him over his shoulder. Mark hits the ground hard and the air gets knocked out of him so fast his chest throbs in pain at the sudden loss. Ethan’s knee digs into his chest as he drops down on top of him, fist cocked back like he’s going to punch Mark dead in the face, the other hand pinning him down hard across his collarbone.

But nothing happens.

Ethan almost immediately backs down once he realizes Mark isn’t going to try to attack anymore, panting and breathless as he gets off of him. Then the smile’s back and he reaches out to offer Mark a helping hand. Mark narrows his eyes, but accepts the assistance anyway and Ethan pulls him up. He knows his grip is too tight, but it’s kind of an unspoken warning in itself: _try anything and I’ll rip your arm off._ Ethan seems unbothered or doesn’t notice, clapping Mark on the shoulder amicably and heading back through the crowd. Mark watches him go for a moment until he disappears, then makes his own way out of the ring in a slightly different direction. He doesn’t go back to the corner he’d met Ethan in. He settles against a different wall and leans heavily on it to catch his breath. Jack finds him first.

“That was fucking amazing,” says Jack, practically bursting with energy as he trots over. “Knew you guys would have an awesome fight from the moment we squared up. You’ve gotta show me how to get out of an armbar though; Ethan always tries to get me into one of those.”

“It’s annoying,” says Mark without thinking. As soon as it comes rocketing out of his mouth, he freezes and glances up at Jack, worried that he’d offended him.

“Yeah, it’s a bitch to get out of. Makes me wanna die each time I get caught in it,” says Jack, not realizing Mark had been referring to Ethan and not the move.

As Mark is stretching out the ache in his muscles, he realizes that, yes, Ethan gets on his nerves, and not just because he beat him tonight (though that does kind of sting a little). It’s because he doesn’t know what to make of him. His mouth runs a mile a minute and he can’t stay on one topic for more than a few seconds at a time. He reeks of teenage abandon and unrestrained wonder, treating everything like he’s literally never seen or experienced it before. He’s excited about everything, even the little things. But then he gets in the ring, and he’s suddenly none of those things. He’s whip-smart suddenly, graceful where he wasn’t beforehand. He’s focused and determined, like he’s reigned in his entire personality and locked it away in a box. He switches between personas so quickly that it gives Mark whiplash trying to keep up with the type of person Ethan might be at any given moment.

Speak of the devil.

He hears Ethan coming before he sees him, voice bright and loud as soon as he spots Mark. If Jack was excited, then Ethan was practically vibrating with boundless energy.

“Hey,” says Ethan, sounding breathless as he bounces up next to Mark, “you wanna get hot dogs? Me and Jack were gonna go out and get some. It’s kind of like a tradition after fights, you know? There’s a late-night shop that’s still open that we go to sometimes; you know, World of Hot Dogs? They’re so good-“

Ethan is rambling again. Mark wants to take him by the shoulders and shake him, shouting, ‘ _please, for once in your life, get to the point and shut up_ ’. Jack must see the thought cross his face because he puts a hand on Ethan’s shoulder and says, “Easy there. You’re gonna talk him to death if you keep this up. Come on, reign it in. Seven words or less.”

Ethan nods, looking determined all of a sudden. “Right. Okay. So, hot dogs. We,” he gestures between himself and Jack, “are gonna go get hot dogs and I wanted to see if you wanted to come.” He looks back at Jack. “Well, that was, like, twenty-two words, but whatever, right?”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” says Mark. “I gotta get home anyway. My, uh, my dog is waiting.”

He does not have a dog – _yet_ – but he really doesn’t think he could spend another hour or so in Ethan’s company, even with Jack present to play mediator. He already feels the throb of a headache coming on.

“Okay,” says Ethan, unbothered. “Maybe some other time. Tell your dog I said hi!”

Mark nods and offers a weak but polite smile. Even if he’d had a dog, he would never tell it Ethan said hi. That’s super petulant, but Mark doesn’t really care. He’s starting to come down off the adrenaline high and his chest and collarbones are starting to hurt like hell. He’s got a session with his trainer scheduled for tomorrow morning and by the time he puts his shirt back on and walks back to his car, it’s already almost midnight. The headache has arrived in full force. His body is screaming for his mattress. He’s definitely taking some ibuprofen after this.

**Author's Note:**

> the skillet bit during mark's introduction to ethan was based off of ethan's actual struggle to think of the word during their 'great meat mistake' video. also, writing fight scenes is either extremely fun and satisfying or is literally work fit for only the devil himself.  
> i'm on tumblr at veedoesthings.tumblr.com


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